Great Sky Woman (5 page)

Chapter Seven

Stillshadow had always loved the mornings. She rose to begin her walks before the new sun was sung to life, just to treasure every moment. Morning shadows were the darkest, the crispest. She could almost hear the morning dew as it dried, smell the first wisps of perfume from the morning glories as they opened, feel the cool sand crunching beneath her naked feet as she walked.

Two guardians following respectfully behind her, Stillshadow sought the herbs, barks and six-legged creatures she smoked or ate or drank to elevate her mind. Some might be dangerous, but it was her place to lead the way in all things. These plants she dug herself, or were dug by her students, scraped from the walls of the sacred caves or bartered for at Spring Gathering when the bhan entered their circle and danced the dream alive for another year.

Eventually, Stillshadow would dance with her ancestors atop Great Sky, and in that mighty time the clouds would part and all would be known. On that day, she hoped to tell those wise and mighty grandmothers that she, too, had faced the mystery with courage.

Suddenly, at the very edge of her vision a small, soft shape appeared, forcing her to stop and look again.

Laid out beneath the red flowers and spiky branches of a fever-bush was the scraped reverse of a zebra skin. And in the precise middle of the skin, an infant lay on its back. The soothing eddies of its bluish
num
-fire proclaimed the infant a girl, but there was something oddly intense about that first impression that took Stillshadow aback. The child’s little body was wrapped in a soft, beaten antelope skin, the small dark head poking out. The face was of extraordinary sweetness, displaying an uncommon calm. The unblinking eyes stared up at Stillshadow almost as if the old woman had been expected.

The crone crept closer, holding her breath. Was this a bhan child, an infant from the outer bomas, parents slain or impoverished? Could this possibly be a trap of some kind? A snare, perhaps a disguised hunting pit?

But who might want to hurt her? And what demon or witch would bait a trap with a
child
?

Even more strangely, why did the infant make so little fuss? She couldn’t imagine it. The girl should be howling.

Whoever had left the child here, southeast of Great Earth’s foothills, had abandoned her within the shadows of a fever-bush. Stillshadow came closer, less afraid now, more fascinated. The old woman lifted the child to her eye level. The infant’s lips were dry, but there were no other signs of dehydration such as sunken eyes or rapid breathing; she checked the soft spot at the top of the skull and was relieved to find it unsunken. Good, but when the sun blazed at its full power the precious remaining shadow would disappear. By night, the little one would be dead.

The infant’s lips curled up. That smile was like the birth of a second sun, pure and broad enough to rock the old woman back on her heels. When the baby’s eyes slid past her, Stillshadow realized that the foundling wasn’t really looking directly at her. More…
through
her. What in Great Mother’s shadow was this?

She unwrapped the antelope hide, confirming her intuition that the child was female. Well…

She waved her fingers before the infant’s face, watching to see if the face-eyes would focus. They did not. But they did
follow.
The attention was directed not on the fleshly fingers but rather the
num
-fire surrounding Stillshadow’s body. Never had the old woman seen the like.

Stillshadow examined the infant’s stubby feet. She gazed at them with her eyes wide and focused tightly, and then rolled her eyes up in her head until all went dim, except a glowing after-image.

The girl’s foot-eyes were bright: this one would walk far. Stillshadow went through the same process with the infant’s hands. Not surprisingly, her hand-eyes glowed even more brightly.

Who was this child?

Stillshadow’s hunt chief escorts stood respectfully away from her, shifting uneasily.

Nothing…then, after a moment, the girl gurgled. Stillshadow squinted and sat,
whuff
ing down next to the scraped zebra skin. The old woman reached into the deerhide pouch at her waist. Extracting the leaf-wrapped medicines, humming a recipe song, she mixed and rolled them together into a ball, then crushed the pellet beneath the infant’s nose, releasing a strong minty aroma.

A moment later, the baby blinked hard. Her eyes wandered away…and then back. And then away…and then back. And remained on the crone. Not exactly focused, but…

Stillshadow moved to the side, and this time the infant’s eyes followed more closely. Back the other way.
They followed.

Strange. She had initially assumed the foundling was blind. With this new development, it seemed almost as if the girl had been waiting for Stillshadow before deigning to focus on things of this world.

The medicine woman gazed up at Great Earth’s misty expanse. “Who is this baby?” she asked.

There was no response. She raised her voice. “Do you know this girl-child?”

If the wind was the mountain’s voice, Great Mother chose to whisper her reply, and Stillshadow’s old ears could not hear. She held the infant up higher. “Who are you?” she asked. “Can you see me? What do you see?”

The child thrashed her arms and legs. The little round brown face wrinkled up tightly. With a faint liquid sound, greenish curd flowed out of her behind and plopped onto the ground. Stillshadow squinted.

“You shit like a man-child,” she said.

The baby smiled at her with infinite satisfaction.

Stillshadow’s blood bubbled like water running over rocks. Not two moons ago her waking dreams had whispered of a coming. Could this child be the crucial One she and the other dream dancers had anticipated? But…there were other stories, tales that Stillshadow had heard from her teacher, who had heard them from hers.

We change,
the old stories said.
We are not as strong as once we were. But there will be more. There will be new people. And the old people will die. In time even the gods themselves will die.

There will be two, and one will be a girl with no name.

Sighing with a strange contentment, the crone enfolded the infant in her arms and rose to carry her home.

Originally, Stillshadow had planned to travel farther south to Water boma, but now decided to return to Great Earth. While her guards maintained a respectful distance, she walked with spine erect, carrying her new charge in arms suddenly as strong as they had ever been. “My girls! My girls! I am back, and I have brought a new sister with me. Come out, lazybones!”

Although it was a two-day trek up Great Earth to the ash cone hidden behind her summit, the dream dancer encampment was only a half day above the plain, a steep and beautiful walk between honeysuckle and weeping fig trees, tall blue-green grasses and countless berry vines.

Like other bomas, their camp was ringed with thorn walls. Unlike the camps around Great Earth and Great Sky, the dream dancer camp had been in the same place for a generation, the dancers using their magic and knowledge to keep it clean and free from pests. In all her journeys, Stillshadow had never found another permanent boma.

The waters flowing from Great Sky nurtured a constant source of game and fruit, such that the Ibandi had remained in its shadow for all their history. They traded with other tribes from the north and the east, their people migrants, following the herds and the seasons. Only the Ibandi were rooted, all the proof she needed that they, and no others, were Father Mountain’s first and best-loved children.

Dream dancers, chosen at birth, were selected and trained for the clarity of their seven eyes. Although they did not take mates or raise families as the boma folk did, they lay with hunt chiefs and had children, that both flesh and spirit might live on after breath had ceased. But their hearts were trothed to Father Mountain, and their bodies belonged to the people themselves, rather than any mere mortal men.

The wooden lean-tos and huts rustled, and one at a time her students emerged: some small, some of them tall and strong, some as young as five springs, others women old enough to be her sisters. All were curious and powerful, all learning and growing under Stillshadow’s protection.

Several of the younger girls approached, accompanied by their teacher, a toothless dreamer named Far Eye. In her youth, Far Eye had been a great walker. Now she rarely roamed far from her hut, and soon, Stillshadow suspected, she would return to the mountain.

Eight-rained Raven grinned as if she had received a present. “Back so soon? We did not expect you until full moon!” She peered more closely at her mother’s bundle. “A new dancer? From Fire boma?” Stillshadow watched the girl carefully, knowing that beneath her good spirits, Raven was doubtless of two hearts concerning any new addition to their boma.

Stillshadow shook her head, and Raven’s smooth forehead wrinkled. “Then, where does she come from?”

Far Eye spat to the north. “The dream world. Her mother’s body. The place all babies come from, silly thing. We need to make room. Bring soft skins, and call your sister. Her milk came down hard, so one more child will be no great burden. Blossom!”

Blossom was Stillshadow’s eldest, a broad-hipped, sharp-eyed girl of ten and ten rains. Blossom emerged from her hut. In her strong right arm she carried a drowsy baby nursing from one enormous breast. Her left hand toyed with a half-finished braid. “Far Eye? Mother? You called me?”

“I have another baby for you,” Stillshadow said.

“Another baby?” Blossom cut her eyes at the medicine woman slyly. “If I take this baby, someone else will have to take some of my cooking and gathering.”

Stillshadow laughed. This one was loyal but lazy, and not half as bright as Raven. Despite her potential, the girl had never fasted and prayed to Great Mother as she should, and her hand and foot eyes had winked closed once again. Now she managed best simply letting her body function in its most basic fashion: eating, sleeping, loving, making and feeding babies. “Yes, and I suppose you will need extra food.”

“Yes.” Blossom bobbed her head. The loose braid fanned in front of her eyes. “Good. Well, let me see her.” She began to inspect the foundling. “All fingers and toes.” Blossom peered more closely still, moving her hand before the child’s eyes. At first there was no response, but then the small moist lips curled in a smile. The baby gurgled merrily, eyes fixed on the moving fingers.

“Is she the One?” Raven asked, voice a bit nervous.

Stillshadow fished in her deerskin pouch, then crouched and threw the bones, staring at the broken white pieces quizzically. She threw again, and then again. Each time her expression grew more discouraged.

Finally she looked up. “I cannot see her nature,” she said.

Raven licked her lips nervously. “Then…she cannot be given a name.”

Stillshadow scowled and stood, listening to her knees crackle. “So. Until we know her nature, we will call her T’Cori, meaning ‘nameless one.’ In another moon, perhaps, a totem will come to me. One day she will have her name.”

Her students murmured. All of them remembered the story.
A nameless child will come. She heralds the death of gods….

The child’s eyes had gone a bit vacant again, wandering, and the girls were puzzled. “Her face-eyes are strange,” Raven said, and kneaded the tiny hands. “I think she sees.”

“More than most,” the old woman said. “She is new from the dream, closer to Great Mother.” She peered into those eyes again, and then smiled.

So tiny. So helpless. With such wide-open eyes in face and hands and feet. Without aid, the child would have been dead within a quarter. But why and how had she survived the night, if someone had left her the previous day? Was she bhan? Had her people been killed, as poor Lizard’s had been? Had she been left to perish, or could someone have known that Stillshadow would come along?

Or…if not some
one,
then what?

Stillshadow sent her apprentices to their tasks. She needed to make certain the child would be properly nurtured. Only then could the old woman continue her circuit of the inner bomas. At the moment, she noticed that her bones did not feel the usual fatigue, and despite lingering fears about the nameless child’s future, that was as good a sign as any that Stillshadow had done the appropriate thing.